Orc

Orcs are broad, heavy-framed, and green-skinned, with prominent lower tusks. Strangers read the build as a soldier's; more often it was earned at a forge, a quarry, or a field. They are the strongest of the Vale's peoples, and the slowest of them to show it.

Every orc carries a fire in the blood. When an orc is hurt, their veins light under the skin with a dull glow, pain stops slowing them, and their body will go on past limits that would stop anyone else. Orcs describe the state as standing at the edge of themselves. It is not madness — focus narrows, and an orc in the fire finishes what they start.

Orcs say they were made early, when the world was still hot, and that the heat never entirely left them. Nobody can verify this, but unlike most origin stories the evidence glows: the fire is there for anyone to see, and orcs point to it and consider the question settled.

Because every orc lives beside their own fire, orc culture is built around restraint. Consent and clear warning are taken seriously; anger is treated as a force to be managed, not indulged; and violence without cause is counted a failure, not a strength. Conflict, when it comes, is meant to end decisively — restoring quiet and leaving no cause for return.

They prefer their own ground. Most orcs keep to farmsteads, smallholdings, and workshops at the quiet end of town, and they avoid the press of the great cities, where small misunderstandings pile up faster than patience can clear them. Those who do settle in cities form compact households and working crews that keep familiar rhythms. It is not fear and it is not hostility; it is the practical management of a nature that runs hot.

The fire has to go somewhere, and mostly it goes into work. Orcs favour trades with heat and repetition in them — the forge, the kiln, the brewhouse, the field — and orc-made goods carry a reputation for being finished properly. Their neighbours know both halves of the arrangement: an orc's patience is long, and it is not endless.